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Algeria Population 2018

42,265,910

Algeria, or the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, is located in North Africa. Algeria is made up of 48 provinces and more than 1,500 communes with a 2018 population estimated at 42.01 million, making it the 33rd most populous country. It is also the 10th largest country and the largest country in Africa.

Algeria has an estimated population of 42.01 million, up from the official 2013 census population of 37.9 million. Algeria is one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world with just 15.9 people per square kilometer (38/square mile). The capital and largest city is Algiers, which has an estimated population of 3.7 million and a larger metropolitan population of 5.4 million. Algiers is very densely populated, with about 10,150 people per square kilometer.

Algeria Demographics

Algeria was inhabited by several prehistoric people, including the Caspian culture, and many empires and dynasties have ruled the region over its history, such as the Romans, Byzantines and the Turish Ottomans. At the beginning of the 20th century, Algeria had 4 million people.

Today, Algeria is inhabited mostly by Arab-Berber people, with 90% of the population living in the coastal area of the north with the people in the Sahara desert concentrated in oases. There are about 1.5 million remaining nomadic and semi-nomadic people in the country. Algeria is a young country, with 1 in 4 people under the age of 15. Interestingly, women play an important role here, making up 70% of Algeria's lawyers and 60% of its university students.

About 96,000 refugees and asylum seekers are living in Algeria, most of whom are from Western Sahara. There are also about 35,000 Chinese migrant workers and up to 165,000 Sahrawis from Western Sahara in refugee camps. Between 600,000 to 2 milion Algerian Turks live in Algeria, and they are today known as Kouloughlis.

The largest concentration of Algerians outside of the country are in France, with more than 1.7 million Algerians. Algeria is the second-largest French-speaking country in the world in terms of the number of speakers. An estimated 11 million Algerians read and write in French.